Whatchoo Talkin’ About Abby?
White People are crazy.
You know when you have that obsessive friend who is all up in your grill? “You totally have to try this new flavor of ice cream. You totally have to.” And they never stop. Until finally one day just to shut them up, you find yourself all alone in your apartment with the lights off and you decide to try that new ice cream. You settle down on the couch and pop the seal, make sure that no one is looking, and proceed to inhale the entire thing like you just got out of prison.
I mean inhale it.
And it’s so bad that it’s kinda good and you lay back on the couch after it’s gone feeling like it is still all over your face, boxer shorts and probably splattered on the wall? And you feel so gross, so bloated and so thankful that no one saw you do it?
Well.
Replace the word“ice cream” with Dance Moms on Lifetime, and that pretty much sums it up.
Reality TV is like the Mob. They always pull you back in.
I always wondered what happens to all those sparkly Toddlers & Tiaras munchkins after they stop competing in the Ramada Inn pageants. I always assumed that they either reported directly to an undisclosed Military Base for some kind of anti-sparkle de-programming, or jumped screaming and lip synching from the family mini van and ran far away like those kids in sci fi movies who see too much too soon.
But I was wrong. They go to Abby Lee Miller’s Dance Compound. Like it or not.
Dance Moms is the poor man’s version of every other reality show all put into a blender with no lid, chewed and hurled back out onto your screen.
You’ve got the same uncomfortably inappropriate pageant girls except this time they are maybe one year older with an extra layer of lipstick, who bust out hand stands and splits instead of pouty faces and finger kisses. You’ve got the fake Real Housewives who talk smack like they’re on Bravo TV, but they’re not. You’ve got the gaudy fake Project Runway costumes but without the boob darts, which for all the bank that the Moms cry about investing in them each week, still need to be sewn up before every performance. What’s that all about? You’ve got a little Roadtrip and Survivor kind of thing thrown in on their bus trips out of town. The Moms all drink, so there’s your Jersey Shore. And you’ve got some Glee, if for no other reason than they keep squawking about Regionals.
You’ve also got Colonel Abby Lee who prides herself on tough choreography and even tougher trainings, demoralizing hissy fits and temper tantrums all in the name of being the Best. To break it down for anyone who missed the first few episodes…if you went to a Sunoco station, inflated Linda Carter with a tire hose, aged her, coated her with waaaaay too much pearlized Bare Escentuals mineral eye shadow and make up, gave her coffee breath and let her loose in Pittsburgh….well, there’s Abby.
She is especially proud of her pyramid of airbrushed dancer photos that she creates each week on one of those wobbly rolling chalk boards that haven’t been around since the AV nerds used to push the TVs from classroom to classroom. The first time I saw it I assumed she was giving a power point breakdown on which girl would go missing first, but I was mistaken. It’s a visual interpretation of who is pretty and talented vs. everyone else who is not. Nice stuff. A simple “You will not be doing a solo cuz you suck” would get the same message across, but this is much more emotionally scarring I guess.
Abby prides herself on being the best choreographer around, which explains why she is working out of Pittsburgh instead of the Shubert Theater on Broadway. We’ve seen her yell and swear and call the cops and just generally be a not nice person this season. The only thing we have not seen her do is…well…choreograph.
I’ll give her this. She has done a few of those round arm, fingers together ballet looking things. (Hey…I can work out a mean Sasha Fierce Single Ladies Dance, but I never put The Nutcracker on my resume. Cut me some slack.) Abby looked like she was demonstrating how she wraps her arms around the All You Can Eat table, but maybe it was ballet. I’m not the authority.
But forget the vacant eyes and/or dancing of the daughters…the Moms are the true pieces of work.
Some time prior to shooting the show, both Kelly and Cathy took a People magazine photo of Kate Gosselin to their stylists and begged for a cheaper version of that whacked out still married to Jon asymmetric porcupine haircut. If even Kate doesn’t want that thing anymore…? Seriously? Trust me, neither of them got their money’s worth. No one should ever attempt to duplicate that hairdo, the Gosselins’ marriage or Ed Hardy t-shirts for that matter. Ever.
Cathy owns her own dance studio, but her daughter is apparently not good enough to go there, so she pays out the money which she saved on her hair and sticks her with Abby.
Then there’s Melissa, whose bio says she is a busy homemaker and “danced for fun” when she was younger. Hold this up to a mirror, and it reads “another one living her lost youth through her daughter.” Same song. Different channel.
Christi has one daughter in dance, and one more weenie little one that she lets crawl unattended all over the studio. Every reality show seems to require both a blond and some randomly placed children, so Christi got the call.
Holly pulled the big scenes out of the hat this week. She is the show’s African American representative, and seems to be the only one with at least one stiletto in reality.
Abby continually finds reasons to set the Race Card back about 100 years by finding “ethnic” numbers for Holly’s daughter in every performance. She justifies this by testifying to the Lor’ that she is grooming little Nia for every future “ethnic” casting call that will come her way. Abby uses the word “ethnic” so often that it sounds kinda nasty by the credits.
For this week’s Warp Speed Phaser StarPower Whatever It’s Called Dance Competition, Abby has big plans. First all the girls are doing a Bob Fosse-ish number that they love because they get to “dance like teenagers” …which I guess means straddling black chairs and getting all Christina Aguilera on the floor. I don’t remember that teen dance number on American Bandstand. I need to check the VHS.
For her solo, Abby dresses Nia in some mashed-up Lion King/Lady Gaga/LaQueefa/Jungle Girl Comic Book costume and then tells Holly to scoot along and buy an afro wig for the kid. I know, right? An afro wig.
Cut to Holly going totally googly oogly. They confront each other and nothing gets accomplished, but it makes for some great TV. Abby puts her pre-recorded mental rant about “ethnic” auditions on a loop and it plays on and on while they argue.
Cathy, of course, sees nothing wrong with it since she seems to consider Holly one of the Help Staff anyway.
The whole thing gave me a flashback to my all time favorite Toddlers & Tiaras diva Allyson, who wanted to be Beyonce so badly that it necessitated going back for a second coat of Home Depot Deck Stain right before her pageant. There was no such thing as too brown. As opposed to Nia, who is already good to go…yet Abby feels the need to interpretive dance her way dangerously close to crossing that Aunt Jemima line. Allyson and her Mom were a hoot. Abby is just a nut roll.
Which coincidentally happens to be my favorite flavor of ice cream.
Almost time for another face full next week.
